


That's How You Came Here, Like a Star Without Name

by lonewytch



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 11/River - Freeform, Eleventh Doctor Era, Episode: s04e08 Silence in the Library, F/M, Introspection, Library virtual world, Loss, Love, Romance, The Library, Virtual Reality, life after death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-18
Updated: 2012-03-18
Packaged: 2017-11-02 02:50:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/364178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonewytch/pseuds/lonewytch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River's time in the Library.<i> She stretched herself out into that world, pressing herself against its boundaries, and found that there were few.</i><br/><strong>A/N:</strong> I wondered what it would be like for River inside the Library computer, the mechanics of how it would work in there, how she would respond to it. This fic is the result of my ponderings. Title from Rumi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That's How You Came Here, Like a Star Without Name

Living in a place where every tale ever told rested inside the heat of a computer core, offered River a vista so wide it was almost as wide as the Universe itself. 

Stories were bound up inside CAL, nestled against each other, not as leaves of paper, but as lines of coded data held in the mind of the little girl called Charlotte. All it took was a word to that little girl, and she could immerse herself inside any world she chose. The imagination that creates stories isn’t bound by the laws of physics or the rationality of the intellect, and there were tales inside there that bent both of them in every possible direction. She could step into any one of those stories, she could re-enact any myth she wished, participate in it – live it. In some ways it began to feel more real that the memory of her real life.

She could sail in a ship moving across a glassy sea, wind whining through its tattered sails, heading for the underworld. A mouth of black where day turned to night because the sky could not be balanced against itself and, turning, tipped over into darkness.

She could stand with saltwater cold around her thighs; water that turned to waves which rushed and poured towards her, becoming white horses with manes of shining green seaweed. They could crash their way over her, her body buffeted by their hooves, her eyes open under the brine watching the sky shift and turn through the rippling water.

She could walk in vast deserts of copper sands, where statues of ancient gods lay half buried, their faces serene and unblinking against the sky, and snakes with jewel bright skin rasping and shifting across the sands. 

She had her crew, all the warmth and the laughter of them to wrap her; the bitter-sweetness of knowing that although they had died in the shadows of the Library, she hadn’t lost them forever. She had Charlotte, the little girl who was so much more than a little girl. A girl who carried both age and wisdom inside her, but was still a child at heart. She reminded her of herself in so many complicated ways. 

She had happiness and health, she knew she wouldn’t sicken or age or die. She had everything. 

Except him. That ridiculous man. 

*

She looked him up numerous times from the very first day, afraid that given eternity her memory of him would begin to fade. She asked Charlotte to access the catalogue and found his name within it, attached to thousands of different stories. It would have been so easy to step across into one of them, just a word to the little girl who controlled the world they lived in, a step forwards and she could see him again. But she never did, because it wouldn’t be him, not really. 

She was afraid she would only find fragments of someone else’s memories spilled across the story, a third or fourth hand yarn passed down, constructing a version of a man she had never known. Instead, she would sit and stare at his name, mouthing the titles of the stories, her breath (which was not really a breath at all) quick in her lungs (which were not really lungs.)

She made it a ritual when she first got there, watching his name blinking across a screen, or reading it printed across a page, depending on how she chose to look at the data. She wanted to guard against her old life fraying in her fingers like a woven cloth, buffeted by the wind of years passing, and disappearing strand by strand.

But she discovered that she didn’t forget her old life. New experiences piled up inside her mind and fresh memories layered themselves into her so that old ones were a little harder to find. But when she did find them they were as fresh as they had been the day that she had, for all intents and purposes, died. This was both blessing and curse, because her time there didn’t soften the memory of the hard edges of his face when he looked at her all unknowing of who she really was, and the gut deep ache with which she missed him. But she also didn’t lose the sweetness of the years and years of her most precious memories.

*

She tested the limits of her new world. 

Fearlessness was always her territory. Drilled into her, but also part of her essential nature. She knew that she could not die inside CAL. She pushed herself further and faster than she would have dared out in the real world - and back in that other life she had dared a lot. She tested her body that was not really a body, tested bone against muscle against nerves, pushed it against this world she found herself in. She attempted things in there that she probably wouldn’t have attempted in the real world because they would be suicide. Or at least, not attempted for herself, only for him. 

Only ever for him. 

She stretched herself out into that world, pressing herself against its boundaries, and found that there were few. 

*

She didn’t dream inside the library, and she missed her dreams. They had always been woven through with the shifting gold of the vortex, ever since she was a child. And though there were some dreams that had been filled with blood and violence, she missed even those. Sleep now was like an endless oblivion of suffocating black. She asked Doctor Moon why she even needed to sleep, why the muscles and tissues of her body (that didn’t exist) could not repair themselves without it, why her mind and memory needed its stabilising influence. He told her that a data ghost functioned according to the structure of its original brain and body. That while she could not die or be irrevocably injured in the Library, or be harmed by staying awake, her virtual body functioned according to the patterns of her original, and sleep would overcome her eventually. 

It frightened her. She wondered if when she closed her eyes, she even still existed in there. Charlotte told her with all the forthrightness of a child, but a wisdom much older in her eyes, that she was being silly and of course she still existed, that the only way she could not exist inside the Library was if Charlotte herself was to delete her data. 

She turned the idea over only once in her mind, and then never thought of it again. It never occurred to her to ask Charlotte to do just that. 

*

She found she had access to any information she wanted. She could study at leisure about ancient civilisations, feed her mind with all the things she had still wanted to learn while she was really alive. She devoured books on specialised fields of archaeology, filled her herself up with all the things she had wanted to learn, but never could. Her mind expanded, sending out branches, weaving pathways of knowledge and experience into her. She had always had a skill for learning, part of the legacy of the time vortex spiralling through her blood. And now she came to know so many things.

She began to wonder about the world she lived in, yearned to understand it, yearned to understand what she really was. She wondered she was still herself or just an echo, a lonely ghost wrapped into a series of noughts and zeroes, just a binary code that streamed through CAL. She wondered if that data could be changed.

So, she asked Charlotte out of curiosity if she could make her into something else. Something other than human; a tree perhaps, a drop of rain, an animal of some type. But the little girl informed her calmly that her data ghost patterned her life inside the computer into her human form, and that she had no power to change that basic data. 

She began to read philosophy; deep ruminations on the nature of existence, on sentience and consciousness. Things that she had never bothered with before, because on the Outside it had been all about the immediacy of her life and the few that she loved. It had been the running and the shooting, the slide of his skin on hers and journeys out to impossible places at the edges of the Universe. But now she searched herself thoroughly, delving deep inside flesh and marrow (that was not really flesh and marrow), examining her own thoughts and perceptions, coming to know herself more thoroughly than ever before.

In the end though, her innate practicality won out. She decided that there were no real answers, and that she was as real as she felt. She was as real as the rain on her face, as real as the warm touch of her friends, as real as the world she breathed in and out. She stopped thinking about it and she lived.

*

Time passed. She didn’t know how much. Time could have had meaning here - the sun rose and set, night stained the sky, stars shone down on her face. She could have marked it all down on a wall, five bar gates stretching wide, marching black lines one after the other. But that would have made her feel as if she was a prisoner here, and she didn’t see it that way. She never asked Charlotte how long it had been Outside. Eventually, Time ceased to have any meaning. 

Her crew, Charlotte, and herself ran through the stories, weaving their way through the pages and the data of the books. This world was theirs and they lived it. Day merged into month merged into year, filled with the laughter of her friends and stories running through her veins. 

Caught up inside the weave of years, inside all the new things that filled her mind, she thought of him and of her life that had once been less and less. What had been a space inside her, burning at the edges when she first arrived, died down to a glow, buried under new knowledge and experience. It faded and receded into the deep parts of herself, and she drew upon her old memories less and less. Those memories were coded into her data, so she could never truly forget. They were there for her to draw upon if she wanted to remember.

But, eventually, she forgot to remember. 

*

Day folded into day, slices of time and experience pressed together like pages in an endless book.

Eventually, there came the day that Charlotte told her shyly that someone had come to see her - someone new, that would be staying with them from now on. She did not suspect, she did not even hope it may be him. He was buried so deep inside her now it was barely a conscious thought, just a dim stirring deep in her bones. She expected some poor soul on an ill advised opportunistic trip to the Library, someone from the far reaches of the Universe who didn’t know about the reasons for the Library lock-down, someone who had come there to salvage parts or saleable antique books and had been consumed by shadows, then Saved by Charlotte.

A late evening sun was shining, warm and gold like honey when she walked barefoot out onto the grass to greet this new resident, and instead found him there. 

Her Doctor. All gangly legs and dishevelled bowtie, a half smile on his face, creases on his brow. His eyes that shifting indistinguishable colour, somewhere between brown and green, all the length of time and space behind them as he gazed at her.

Her hearts thudded out a violent rhythm, sending vibrations through her whole body and the feeling of blood rushing hot to her head and the tips of her fingers. She locked her eyes to his, barely believing, barely seeing, wondering if somehow, one of the stories had broken free of its covers, data spinning its way out and leaking into their virtual world. Hope flared bright inside her, trying to eke out a path through her veins and nerves - but she held herself still inside it, not daring to move and break the moment in case it shattered and fell away from her like glass to the floor.

But then he smiled at her fully, and it felt real in a way she couldn’t quite describe, more real than the sea or sand on her feet in the stories, more real than the many worlds she had seen made up of thoughts and words. He felt _real_. 

_Oh, my love..._

They moved towards each other, like two galaxies locked onto a collision course. She pressed herself to him, and the energy which seemed to rise and then fold itself around them as their bodies and their mouths met seemed twice as bright as a million stars bursting together. 

Then, in that moment, her body suddenly felt more real than it had ever felt in or outside the Library. Memories buried deep stirred and rose up, cast off their mist, and broke across the surface of her mind. Nights and nights spent together with that mad impossible man who had held her hearts for so many years. The breathless running, the fighting, all the death and grief, all the wonders and the love. 

Both of them trailing a bright path across the heavens, spinning through time in a box of brightest blue, never stopping. All of it, as fresh as the day she had died.

She remembered who she had been, who she was, who she would be now.

“Hello, River.” 

_His_ River Song.


End file.
